1. Technical Field
The present disclosure relates to automatic detection and, more specifically, to the automatic detection of lymph nodes.
2. Discussion of Related Art
The human body includes hundreds of lymph nodes distributed primarily in the underarms, groin, neck, chest and abdomen. Because many forms of cancer are highly likely to produce lymph node metastasis, the surgical removal of lymph nodes, known as lymphadenectomy, may be performed as part of the surgical management of cancer.
For this reason, the location of lymph nodes within the body may be of particular interest to medical practitioners such as oncologists and radiologists that are involved in the diagnosis and treatment of cancer.
Traditionally, location of lymph nodes within medical images is performed manually by medical practitioners who review the medical image data and mark the medical images at the location of observed lymph nodes. As manual identification may be time consuming, unrepeatable and prone to error, computer aided lymph node detection is expected to benefit the provision of healthcare.
Lymph nodes, however, may be found in a wide variety of shapes and sizes. While many lymph nodes may have a substantially bean-shape, lymph nodes may vary widely in sphericity and size. For example, lymph nodes may vary in shape from being substantially elongated to being substantially spherical. Lymph nodes may also vary in size from being several millimeters to several centimeters.
Additionally, lymph nodes may substantially enlarge, for example, in the presence of disease. Accordingly, the size and shape of lymph nodes is highly variable.
The wide variety in the size and shape of lymph nodes makes them particularly difficult to automatically detect from medical images.